From what I understand, Eno actually did show up for a Scratch event or two as a participant, though he was never a regular member of the group as sie write-ups of his career infer.

Maybe Jon could prevail on Keith to enlighten us as to Mr Eno's participation or not in Scratch.. I love Nirav's line "Eno is only a few steps removed from Cardew", as if that fact (alone?) made it OK for us to check him out. For my money, Eno's a damn sight more listenable and perhaps in the long term more influential than Cardew, who would arguably have slipped off the radar altogether had it not been for the AMM connection. I await Tilbury's bio with interest, if only to see how he manages to excuse Cardew's late works, which are frankly pretty fucking awful.

Dan's not a fan of Cardew, in case that hasn't been made clear in the past. :)

Dan, what's your problem with Cardew's late work (I'm assuming your talking about things like "We Sing for the Future!", "Thalmann Variations", etc). Do you feel similarly about Skempton and Rzewski? While I find the People's Liberation Music disc pretty bad, it's much more for the strident lyrical content and actual performance than the melodies, several of which, in unmangled form, I think are very attractive.

In that he seemed to be moving back to a accepting stance toward free improv in the years before his death (actually reuniting with AMM briefly in the late 70s), I think it would have been fascinating to hear how he made use of the melodic/socialist-realist aspect of his music (if at all) in AMM or other situations.

PS. I enjoy Eno also.

"Dan's not a fan of Cardew, in case that hasn't been made clear in the past. :)"
Not true! Those two discs of Cardew's music on Matchless (the chamber music & the piano pieces with Tilbury) are among my very favourite records! I readily acknowledge he was an essential catalyst in British experimental music, a pedagogical and ideological figure of enormous influence (a little like John Stevens, in a way). But I think the importance of "Treatise" as a graphic score has been exaggerated out of all proportion, and as I've said before I don't really enjoy any of the extant recorded versions of it. It's been a convenient excuse for musicians of little ability to score some cheap publicity and lucrative gigs. I find the implications of "Octet" much more interesting as a performer. "The Great Learning" is about as interesting to me as Stevens' large ensemble improv pieces.

"What's your problem with Cardew's late work (I'm assuming your talking about things like "We Sing for the Future!", "Thalmann Variations", etc)?"

What's my problem? They just sound AWFUL, that's what. Pitch deaf, rhythmically stilted, badly orchestrated, formally clumsy, awkward, plain awful.

"Do you feel similarly about Skempton and Rzewski?"

The bombastic "People United" Rzewksi, yes. It seems bizarre to claim to be acting in the name of Marxist / Lenininst revolution and using an outmoded High Capitalist Romantic form like the theme and variations. The difference between him and Cardew is that Rzewksi's piano writing is at least competent - probably because it's more or less nicked from Chopin, Liszt and Busoni.
Skempton is a different kettle of fish - the goals are much more modest and the political implications embedded in the music (like Wolff). It sounds good too. That disc of his on Mode is superb.

"In that he seemed to be moving back to a accepting stance toward free improv in the years before his death (actually reuniting with AMM briefly in the late 70s), I think it would have been fascinating to hear how he made use of the melodic/socialist-realist aspect of his music (if at all) in AMM or other situations."

Yes, it would be curious to hear C jamming with AMM at that time. Do any recordings exist, Jon?
Meanwhile, going back to Cardew, he's often mentioned in the same breath as Cage, Wolff and Feldman but for my money as a composer he's not in their league.

"Yes, it would be curious to hear C jamming with AMM at that time. Do any recordings exist, Jon?"

I wasn't even aware that they actually played together again, I thought it was just under discussion when he was killed. you'll have to query the keeper of all things AMM, Eddie P., but I tend to doubt it, or we'd have seen them released already.

"going back to Cardew, he's often mentioned in the same breath as Cage, Wolff and Feldman but for my money as a composer he's not in their league."

I don't recall ever seeing him mentioned in the same breath as those other guys.

I think the Rowe/Prevost/Cardew/Gare AMM was "together" for only about a month sometime around 1976 or so before Gare decided to beg off and Cardew drifted away. Not certain if they actually played or if they'd only come to a kind of agreement to reform. I gather (Tilbury's book, i assume, will either confirm this or not) that Cardew had again been thinking about rejoining around 80-81).

"I don't recall ever seeing him mentioned in the same breath as those other guys."
I do, but anyway it's not as interesting as news of the Tilbury book. When's that due? Anybody know?
To cheer myself up on a murky Monday afternoon, I was just reading through bits of "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism". Hilarious! (Though not as hilarious as the photo of Karlheinz cutting his birthday cake at stockhausen.org

Hello folks.

Rumour has it that the Tilbury book is still in process; but not long to go now.

I think TREATISE is under-estimated; the precision, thr thoroughness, with which it works through the 60-plus components leaves it far ahead of a lot of messier, scrappier, more off-the-cuff works (Logothetis?? Moran??). Works that rival it, oftene xcellent, frequently do so by settling, like Earle Brown, for a reduced compass (single pages; TREATISE is 193...).

I think it would be a good idea, though, to re-read Cardew's critique of the graphic score in S.S.I.; it is brighter and more on-the-ball than a lot of non-Comrades seem to think...

Best

Harry Gilonis

In response to two doubts raised by Jon...

"I wasn't even aware that they actually played together again"

In 'No Sound is Innocent' (p. 186), Eddie Prévost writes: "Sometime in 1976 first moves in rapprochment occurred in which private sessions with Cardew, Rowe, Gare and Prévost occurred". So, it seems they did play together, but not publicly.

"I don't recall ever seeing him mentioned in the same breath as those other guys."

One person who mentioned Cardew and Wolff in the same breath is Feldman himself. Thus, on Cardew's death, Feldman wrote: "However, it is in a work such as The Great Learning which I feel Cardew found a unique equanimity of means between a musical poetry and his political beliefs - something akin to what Christian Wolff is doing with similar concerns" . Perhaps he was just being kind about the dead, but Feldman always seems to have a soft spot for Cardew. Remember his statement that "Any direction modern music will take in England will come about only through Cradew, because of him, by way of him" - and his famous description of the "three conspirators":

"Cardew and his friends have more more prestige in the rest of Europe than they do at home, but that just thickens the plot. They're making their own scene in England, very much as Cage and the rest of us made ours here in America back in the fifties. If anything, they have more swagger, they're more out of a movie than we were. Can't you just see Cardew, Tilbury and Bedford making that night train across the Channel to Warsaw? Cardew in his Victorian ulster, Tilbury in that black raincoat he wears, Bedford in a leather jacket...three conspirators right out of Eric Ambler, on their way to represent England at one of the most important avant-garde music festivals in Europe!" (from Feldman's 1967 essay 'Conversations Without Stravinsky'